what ship plays with icebergs
and plays soft music as it sinks into the ocean?
what ship on the throw of a dice
feeds a prophet to his fishy destination?
what ship breaks its spine on the rocks
and turns the waves black with lubrication?

a ship of fools
but there are fools and
those who seem to be

what ship is built on a dry highland
is launched by a downpour
and flies on watery wings to the peak of a mountain?
what ship has a crew
of taxmen thieves and fishermen
who decide in the howling storm
to make a small sleeping carpenter
their captain?

yes
a ship of fools
but there are fools and
those who only appear to be

Simon Jenkins, 1977

 

Ship of fools ^[1]

On that clear, cold, starlit night in April 1912, the mighty behemoth steamed proudly onward at 22 knots through the darkness, its captain confident that he could win at a game of Russian roulette with an armada of floating icebergs.  In the first class decks, the pampered nobility slipped their pedicured feet between starched and ironed sheets, and pulled their downy quilts under their chins, slipping into peaceful slumber, secure in the knowledge they were in the best of hands.

Hours later, a strange, barely detectable but noticeable shudder reverberated through the ship’s massive structure, awakening a few of the lighter sleepers who sensed something had gone ominously wrong.  As they peered sleepily out of their portholes, a surreal vista assaulted their rapidly awakening senses.  Instead of the expected inky-black night time sky, a brightly moonlit wall of white and blue ice towered over their ship like a mighty leviathan that just emerged angrily out of the deep.

The elite captain’s luck had just run out as the colossal iceberg slashed a fatal gash in the hull below the waterline, yet most aboard remained oblivious to the rapidly unfolding reality that they were doomed.  The designer of the fabled “Titanic” happened to be on board for this maiden voyage and to his dismay, calculated that the ship had but a few hours to stay afloat.

Filled to the limit with a mix of the “rich and famous,” including American and European royalty, industrial tycoons, plus a host of ill-fated peasants in steerage, the resulting horrific loss of life was to stun the world.  How could this “unsinkable” ship, the pinnacle of modern marine technology, fail to avoid such a fate, and after having done so, been unable to save but a handful of passengers?  How could their elite crew, utilizing state-of-the-art navigation, plow straight into an ice-field despite a steady stream of wireless warnings of danger ahead?

Lifeboat anyone?

Compounding the tragedy, the Titanic carried just 20 lifeboats, only enough to accommodate 33% of passengers and crew.  Even then, as the great ship sank to the bottom of the sea, most of the lifeboats were only partially full, leaving 472 unused spaces.  There was plenty of time for more to abandon ship, but most stayed aboard despite rapidly unfolding evidence that she was going down.  As one observer said,

“it is believed that this low number was due to passengers being reluctant to leave the ship, as initially they did not consider themselves to be in imminent danger.”

Arthur Rostron, Captain of the rescue vessel Carpathia, in ‘Home from the Sea’, 1931 concluded,

“It hardly bears thinking about that if there had been sufficient boats that night…every soul aboard could have been saved, since it was two-and-a-half hours after she struck that she tilted her massive stern into the heavens and sank by the head, taking with her all that were un-provided for.” ^[i]

And the band played on

Remarkably, even as the great ship listed severely and was taking water, the band played on.  Here is how Senan Molony, in his book “Killing Them Softly” described it:

“The strains of classical music early in proceedings conveyed the message that everything was as near normal as could be. Every wafting note spoke sweetly that the emergency was not what is was – an emergency – but instead a temporary inconvenience. The playing of the band ran directly counter to the entreaties of officers and crew that women and children should enter the boats.”

“Classical music in particular has a comforting, relaxing effect – which is why it is increasingly to be heard in dentists’ and doctors’ waiting rooms. But it also creates a mood of conviviality, of unity, of optimism.  Conviviality meant staying with the crowd; optimism meant safety in numbers; unity meant preferring the majority. Those brave souls who opted to enter tiny lifeboats were defying the prevailing mood, a mood encouraged by the fact that music was playing at all. They were swimming against the tide, but their conscious and independent choices would save their swimming later.”

“How foolish it was to play music! How sad that it helped to encourage jibes at those who did enter the boats – “You’ll miss breakfast!” “You’ll need a pass to get back in the morning!” “We’ll see you in New York” – such that those who risked entering them also risked being ridiculed later. “How innocent you were, my dear. Danger, indeed! Why, we had a lovely time here all night, listening to the orchestra.”

Bottom line, the popular bet isn’t always the safest bet,

“The risk was in staying, not in going, yet it was made psychologically more difficult for passengers to enter an early lifeboat by a shipping line that compounded reckless navigation with grotesquely misplaced complacency and pride – even after their surpassing vanity had been devastatingly punctured.”^[ii]

We’ve all been born on a sinking ship

Throughout his ministry, Jesus Christ reminded his followers that life consists of more than meets the eye and our time on earth is very brief.  He warned that the world we know is fatally flawed and is scheduled for demolition.  He cautioned us not to be taken by surprise by this, but to look forward to a time when he will return to establish his kingdom which will never end.  He put it this way:

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.  Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” ^[2]

The “days of Noah” referred to were times of willful ignorance which were followed by a catastrophic worldwide judgment that ended all human life except for a tiny remnant with which God re-populated the earth.

In his book, “Earth’s Earliest Ages,” [iii] G. H. Pember shows how conditions in the “days of Noah” bear a striking resemblance to conditions in our more modern times.

-Worship of a god who is neither personal or caring—the god of the theist or deist.  This “god” is more of a “thing” than a personal being who possesses the characteristics of personality namely, intellect, will, and emotion.

-An “undue prominence of the female sex,” “a change in the relation of the sexes,” along with a “disregard for the primal law of marriage.”  Can you say, “Gay rights,” “women’s rights,” “abortion rights?”  All of these current issues dominate the headlines, divide whole societies, and are charged with extraordinary emotion.

-An explosion of “creature comforts,” luxury, automation, entertainment, all of which greatly mitigate the curse in the Garden of Eden.  With possessions come the soul-deadening desire for more coupled with a boastfulness of what one already has.

-A steady, corrosive movement to join the nominal Church with the world’s culture, virtually obliterating any distinction between the two.  This is also marked by grand buildings, ornate ceremonies, and outlandish wealth while still proclaiming allegiance to a Founder who died a penniless criminal.

-A vast increase in the population of the world.  While the population of the world in the antediluvian days of Noah was likely in the range of 5 million, the numbers had skyrocketed from a handful of tribal families in a relatively short (geologically speaking) time period.  Likewise, the population of the “modern” world has increased geometrically from about 300 million at the time of Christ to upwards of 7.3 billion in 2015.  It is noteworthy that we did not cross the one billion mark until the year 1800.  [iv]

-A hardening of men’s hearts to the pleadings of God through his word and ministers to repent and turn toward God before it is too late.

-An increase in occult practices which intermingle human and angelic spirits.  This is particularly prevalent in today’s “New Age” movement.

Pember concludes of these two ages,

“These causes [listed above] concurred to envelop the world in a sensuous mist which no ray of truth could penetrate.  They brought about a total forgetfulness of God and disregard of his will; and thus, by removing the Great Center who alone is able to attract men from themselves, rendered the dwellers upon earth so selfish and unscrupulous that the world was presently filled with lewdness, injustice, oppression, and bloodshed.”

Do these conditions sound at all familiar?  It’s like reading today’s newspaper headlines, or listening in on many college philosophy or social science classes.  Don’t you think it’s time to check the bilges of this creaky old ship-of-state and start thinking about alternative transportation?

But don’t be surprised if you have to leave a lot of friends and relatives behind.  Remember most of the lifeboats on Titanic were only partially full–there was plenty of time for more to abandon ship, but most stayed aboard despite rapidly unfolding evidence that she was going down, they did not consider themselves to be in imminent danger!”  Remarkably, even as the great ship listed severely and was taking water, the band played on, conveying the message that everything was as near normal as could be.

It is a sobering thought that, “…those brave souls who opted to enter tiny lifeboats were defying the prevailing mood, they were swimming against the tide, but their conscious and independent choices would save their swimming later.”

The cosmic war for your mind

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

—Former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

In the field of modern military conflict, electronic counter measures (ECM) are routinely employed to jam the command and control systems of opposing forces, rendering them effectively useless.  Suppose there were similar techniques being employed right under our noses in the spiritual realm?

In his book, “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction,” Matthew Crawford observes,

“From mall Muzak to text messages, pop-ups and robocalls, there is no shortage of claims on our attention…we have become “isolated in fog of choices,” many of them unwelcome.  He adds rather ominously, “We are afflicted by a cultural crisis of attention imperiling not only our mental health but also our ability to function as responsible citizens in a democracy.”  He says, “It’s hard to open a newspaper or magazine these days, without reading a complaint about our fractured mental lives, diminished attention spans, and a widespread sense of distraction.”  Bottom line, he warns, “our interior mental lives are laid bare as a resource to be harvested by others.” [v]

In his satirical novel, “The Screwtape Letters,” C. S. Lewis writes of the fictional demon “Screwtape” who is training his novice nephew “Wormwood” in the fine art of tempting humans, “Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out…”  The most effective technique for squeezing good knowledge out of one’s mind is to consume its “bandwidth” with so many distractions that nothing else can get in.  Those distractions don’t need to be particularly bad (or good for that matter), just compelling enough to hold the subject’s attention.  C. S. Lewis’ character “Screwtape” puts it this way,

“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.”

Addressing this grave and subtle peril, two thousand years ago, the Apostle Paul wrote to a fledgling group of believers embedded in the decadent and corrupt culture in the Greek metropolis of Corinth with these words of warning, “The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.” [3]

There is a furious ongoing Satanic assault upon the target-rich spiritual lives of distracted and preoccupied modern men and women for control of their minds.  The weapons employed are ideas, values, and principles that wreak as much devastation inwardly as bombs and bullets do outwardly.

The postmodern worldview has clouded our mental perspective very much like when airplane pilots fall prey to “whiteout,” which is a weather condition that causes disorientation and low visibility by snow, overcast cloud and fog. The pilot loses sight of the horizon because of the terrain covered with snow in the white sky.  Similarly, in the field of ideas, philosophies, and beliefs, it is possible to lose sight of absolutes, truths, and fixed principles.  One expert source on worldviews stated:

“Postmoderns deny that there is any overarching story, or metanarrative, to the world. Therefore, we all come from a perspective, or bias, that is shaped by the culture, or the “little stories,” we inhabit. As Kevin Vanhoozer states, “Postmoderns are so preoccupied with the situated self that they cannot get beyond it.” ^[vi] Because of this “situatedness,” no one can claim objectivity for his or her views.”

They continue, “In the postmodern worldview, everything is contingent; nothing is fixed. There are several implications of confronting reality this way.”  This leads to at least two rather disorienting effects:

First, reality is ultimately unknowable. Our “situatedness” prevents us from directly accessing the real world or having true knowledge about it.

Second, truth and knowledge are constructions of language. They reflect the perspective of the one who is claiming, but should not be confused as a statement of fact about actual reality–there is no absolute truth; there are only “truths.” ^[vii]

Is reality really negotiable?

As of 2015, countries in the west are well into their third generation of young people who have been immersed in the postmodern worldview through their schools and culture.  In less than fifty years, the shift in popular views have been unmistakable in at least five ways:

We have redefined God into either a mythical remnant of ages past, or an impersonal “higher power,” “force,” or “thing” that is distant and unknowable.

We have redefined mankind, as Randy Alcorn points out, into a

“descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago.  You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces.  You are a mere grab bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance.  You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe.  You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba.  You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely.  In short you came from nothing and are going nowhere.” [viii]

We have redefined truth as something we “make up as we go along,” to serve the purposes of society at any given time.  Truth is therefore relative and changeable.

We have redefined evil into no more than the result of “social conditioning,” and not a “thing” in itself.  Therefore, what we call “evil” is the result of bad socialization and curable through reeducation and psychological therapy.

We have redefined salvation and the “hereafter” as achieving an earthly utopia where man is sovereign and secular humanism is our savior.

Where these ideas take us

For that, look no further than a 2013 article by Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical Team entitled, “Are we raising a generation of deluded narcissists?”  He writes:

“These [Facebook, Twitter, computer games, etc.] are the psychological drugs of the 21st Century and they are getting our sons and daughters very sick, indeed.  As if to keep up with the unreality of media and technology, in a dizzying paroxysm of self-aggrandizing hype, town sports leagues across the country hand out ribbons and trophies to losing teams, schools inflate grades, energy drinks in giant, colorful cans take over the soft drink market, and psychiatrists hand out Adderall like candy.

All the while, these adolescents, teens and young adults are watching a Congress that can’t control its manic, euphoric, narcissistic spending, a president that can’t see his way through to applauding genuine and extraordinary achievements in business, a society that blames mass killings on guns, not the psychotic people who wield them, and—here no surprise—a stock market that keeps rising and falling like a roller coaster as bubbles inflate and then, inevitably, burst.

That’s really the unavoidable end, by the way. False pride can never be sustained. The bubble of narcissism is always at risk of bursting.  That’s why young people are higher on drugs than ever, drunker than ever, smoking more, tattooed more, pierced more and having more and more and more sex, earlier and earlier and earlier, raising babies before they can do it well, because it makes them feel special, for a while.  They’re doing anything to distract themselves from the fact that they feel empty inside and unworthy.

Distractions, however, are temporary, and the truth is eternal. Watch for an epidemic of depression and suicidality, not to mention homicide, as the real self-loathing and hatred of others that lies beneath all this narcissism rises to the surface.  I see it happening and, no doubt, many of you do, too.   We had better get a plan together to combat this greatest epidemic as it takes shape.  Because it will dwarf the toll of any epidemic we have ever known. And it will be the hardest to defeat. Because, by the time we see the scope and destructiveness of this enemy clearly, we will also realize, as the saying goes, that it is us.” [ix]

And while individuals are affected at all levels by the cultural and moral tsunami engulfing our country and our world, so are the institutions of government:  Consider a commentary written and recited by Ben Stein on CBS Sunday Morning following The White House’s decision to call this year’s Christmas tree a “Holiday Tree.”

“Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her: ‘How could God let something like this happen [regarding Hurricane Katrina]?’.  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said: ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’”

“In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare [she was murdered, her body found a few years ago] complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said okay. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said okay.”

“Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem [Dr. Spock's son committed suicide]. We said an expert should know what he’s talking about. And we said okay.”  Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.  Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with, ‘we reap what we sow.’”

“Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.”  [x]

One wonders, have these ideas just “bubbled up” spontaneously within the heart of the average modern man, or is there a more sinister, sweeping, and pervasive plan unfolding that is being systematically orchestrated from outside the human sphere altogether?

Where these ideas come from

Do you doubt the power of ideas?  Dallas Willard once observed, “When the Devil approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, he didn’t hit her with a stick, but with an idea.”  The Devil’s ghastly notion was sown in the fertile mind of Eve that God’s intentions were not good toward her, and she better protect herself by learning all she can about good and evil.  Once she brought Adam on board with that whopper of a lie, the actions followed in lockstep.  That’s all it took to redirect the course of human history, and it’s been that way ever since.

When the Hitler’s, Marx’s, and Pol Pot’s of the world embark on a campaign to control a country, their first targets are the thought leaders who might stand in their way.  Isaiah Berlin warned, “The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.”  Joseph Stalin made no secret of his beliefs in this regard when he said, “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”

Is it any wonder then that the Devil’s great “workroom” throughout history has been academia, youth culture, politics, and government where the leverage is highest to manipulate and shape the minds of the idealistic and naïve.  This war of ideas has been going on for a long time all the way back to the proverbial Garden.

Everything depends on your perspective

Jumping from the “grotesquely misplaced complacency and pride” of Titanic’s creators, fast forward to 1969, following the most spectacular scientific quest in human history…“I think the one overwhelming emotion that we had was when we saw the earth rising in the distance over the lunar landscape . . . . It makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away it really is a small planet… It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don’t show from that distance.” — Frank Borman, Apollo 8, press reports, 10 January 1969.

Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 & 13 astronaut, in his interview for the 2007 movie “In the Shadow of the Moon” added,

“We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you’ve ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself—all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how fortunate we are to have this body and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself.”

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small”— Neil Armstrong.  “Oddly enough the overriding sensation I got looking at the earth was, my god that little thing is so fragile out there”— Mike Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut.

Carl Sagan, author of “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994” summed it up this way,

“Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

What they believed from childhood to be “terra firma,” was literally hanging by a thread attached to absolutely nothing.  Those astronauts were treated to a rare glimpse of our “third rock from the sun” and came away profoundly changed.  Is it possible that if we got a similar view of our lives, from God’s perspective, we might be similarly moved to reconsider our place in the universe?

So what?  What difference can a broader perspective make for people just trying to survive in a dog-eat-dog world?  Could it be that one of the many unique properties of human beings versus the animals is that over time, we gain insights from our surroundings that literally have the power to drive more positive behaviors toward one another.  A fascinating study by UC Irvine supports this notion:

“Inducing a sense of awe in people can promote altruistic, helpful and positive social behavior, by feeling diminished in the presence of something greater than oneself. It is this reduced sense of self that sways focus away from an individual’s need and toward the greater good.”

“When experiencing awe, you may not, egocentrically speaking, feel like you’re at the center of the world anymore,” they said. “By shifting attention toward larger entities and diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, we reasoned, awe would trigger tendencies to engage in pro-social behaviors that may be costly for you but that benefit and help others.”

“Across all these different elicitors of awe, we found the same sort of effects – people felt smaller and less self-important, and they behaved in a more pro-social fashion,” they said. “Might awe cause people to become more invested in the greater good, giving more to charity, volunteering to help others, or doing more to lessen their impact on the environment? Our research would suggest that the answer is yes.”  [xi]

We live for seventy years or so
(with luck we might make it to eighty),
And what do we have to show for it? Trouble.
Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.
Oh! Teach us to live well!
Teach us to live wisely and well! [4]